Vietnamese Folk Music Performance “Bamboo and Silk”

Sat 10 Jan 2015, 8 pm

L’Espace

24 Tràng Tiền, Hà Nội

You are invited to Vietnamese folk music night “Bamboo and Silk” with ca tru, cheo, chau van and xam performances.

Following the huge success of 2 performances in the famous Guimet museum, France, within the framework of Vietnam Year in France, “Bamboo and Silk” will be delivered for the first time in Hanoi at L’Espace. The concert will take the audience to a travel back in time across 10 centuries of Vietnamese culture and music.

The audience will be immersed in the voice, instrument, timbre and rhythm of Vietnamese ancient melodies. Many of the songs to be performed were recorded by UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

People’s Artist Xuan Hoach – Đàn Nguyệt, Đàn Đáy

Meritorious Artist Dang Cong Hung – Dan Nguyet

Meritorious Artist Vu Ngoc – Drums

Meritorious Artist Doan Thanh Binh – Vocal

Artist Thanh Ha – Vietnamese 16-chord zither

People’s Artist Thanh Hoai – Vocal

Tickets

Ticket price: 160 000 VND

Special price for members of L’Espace and students: 80 000 VND

Tickets are available at L’Espace.

Installation Exhibition “Life Portrait 5 – Inclined Shadow”

Opening: Fri 09 Jan 2015, 6 pm

Exhibition: 09 Jan – 24 Feb 2015

L’Espace

24 Trang Tien, Hanoi

What is the shadow? What does it reflect, contain and hide? The installation exhibition titled “Life Portrait 5 – Inclined Shadow” by Tran Duc Quy offers a reflection on the relationship between a subject and its shadow, their interactions, its stretch or shrinking based on the sunlight.

“It is impossible to imagine how my flat black shadow transforms in the sun. Sometimes my shadow looks exactly like me and talks to me. What would happen if I became the shadow of the shadow that had become myself? How should I behave? How could I incline without falling?…”

Free entrance.

Music Concert by Japanese Traditional Drum Troupe BATI – HOLIC

Hanoi: Wed 07 Jan 2015, 8 pm

Youth Theater

11 Ngo Thi Nham, Hanoi

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Thanh Hoa: Fri 09 Jan 2015

Lam Son Theater

Sat 10 Jan 2015

Lam Son Square

The Japan Foundation Center for Cultural Exchange in Vietnam proudly presents a drum concert by BATI-HOLIC on Wednesday 7 January 2015 in Hanoi.

BATI-HOLIC performed in Hanoi and Hue last April. Their powerful drum performances attracted a lot of audience in Vietnam. This time, they will perform in Hanoi and also in Thanh Hoa as a part of the program “Japan Cultural Day”.

BATI-HOLIC formed in 2004 in Kyoto where the culture and the traditions of Japan accumulated, is Performing Arts Group in instrumentation that songs, Shinobue (Japanese flute) also mix with Wadaiko (Japanese traditional percussion).

The style of BATI-HOLIC is oriented towards the novelty even while using traditional instruments, beyond the framework of traditional features. They perform more than 100 times a year at various venues like concert halls, live houses, schools, festivals in various areas, not only in Japan but also in foreign countries. Their stage fills with passion and is full of modern sense. It attracts audience regardless of generation, cultural background.

The concert in Hanoi will be held at Youth Theater (11 Ngo Thi Nham, Hanoi), at 20:00 on Wednesday 7 January.

Two concerts in Thanh Hoa, part of the program “Japan Cultural Day”, will take place on 9 and 10 January:

Friday 9 January 2015, Lam Son Theater

Saturday 10 January 2015, Lam Son Square

In Hanoi: Free tickets are available from 14:00 on Friday 2 January 2015 at

The Japan Foundation

27 Quang Trung, Hoan Kiem, Hanoi

TEL 04 3944 7419

[Opening Hours: 09:30 – 18:00, closed on Sunday]

Exhibition “Townscapes”

Exhibition: 16 Dec 2014 – 16 Jan 2015, 9.30 am – 6.30 pm

Dong Phong Art Gallery

03 Ly Dao Thanh Street

Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi

“Townscapes” is a solo exhibition by the accomplished artist Do Minh Tam held in the small Dong Phong Gallery, known to art lovers for several successful art shows earlier this year. The exhibition will display the most recent of Do Minh Tam’s extraordinary paintings, showing new talents of an artist who is already well known for his brilliant abstract motives. Being the festive season, these paintings might become wonderful Christmas and/or New Year gifts to lovers of Vietnamese fine arts.

With refined skill, Do Minh Tam guides viewers on a stroll from townscape to townscape on his small-sized acrylic paintings. With skillful brushstrokes, Do Minh Tam mixes colours and shapes to create movable spaces – at times leisurely, at other times effusive – that interleave the past and the present, the city and the village.

Japanese Literature Week 2014

26 Dec 2014 – 08 Jan 2015

Japan Foundation Center for Cultural Exchange in Vietnam

27 Quang Trung, Hoan Kiem, Hanoi

You are invited to a series of events within the framework of Japanese Literature Week 2014 for a deeper understanding of Japanese literature not only from books but also through a seminar, exhibition, film screening and other art forms.

Language: Vietnamese and Japanese. For more information, please refer to Vietnamese version of this post.

Exhibition “Nguyen Cam 20 Year Retrospective Imprints of Origin”

Opening: Sat 13 Dec 2014, 6 pm

Exhibition: 13 Dec 2014 – 13 Jan 2015

Art Vietnam Gallery

24 Ly Quoc Su (2nd Floor), Hanoi    

20 years of celebration of art and life in Vietnam – Artist Nguyen Cam and Art Vietnam Gallerist Suzanne Lecht mark an honoring of the past, an embracing of the present and a look to the future.

One a stranger in his homeland, one a stranger in a land of strangers, Nguyen Cam and Suzanne Lecht are celebrating 20 years of art and life in Vietnam, each possessing a rich memory full of longing for a life lost and a well of happiness for a life regained.

Born in Haiphong in 1944 Nguyen Cam returned to Vietnam in 1994 after being exiled with his family in 1954. A period of living in Laos, raising singularly his 5 siblings at the tender age of 17 was followed by a move to Paris in 1969. An autodidact, Cam had opened a gallery in Vientiane and had some local repute as an artist of talent and passion. Fueled with ambition and dreams, Cam moved to Paris to enroll in the Ecole des Beaux Arts to verify perhaps to himself alone that he was in truth a “real artist.”

In 1994, a tribute to Cam as an artist and as a man, the Vietnamese government invited Cam to come back to his country to exhibit and to teach at the national fine art universities. Reunited with his homeland after a 50 year absence was a powerful, moving experience for the seasoned artist. His memories of Vietnam were those of a child, an innocent trapped in the turmoil of his country with forces beyond his control. Moving through the halls of memory, traces of the past began to appear in his work. Old used rice sacks, votive paper offerings, small patches of silver leaf applied lovingly as one might adorn a Buddhist sculpture, began to emerge in his work. Fragments of the past and a reverence for the present appeared as adornments marking his reconciliation with his history and with his heart.

A freedom hard won emerged, walls collapsed and the alluvial soil ebbed and flowed as the wellspring of his hopes and joys were finally released from the stricture of time.

The works became a progression of free canvas tarpaulins covered with torn rice sacks; Roots, Traces of the Past 1997, slashes of injury held together by a thread of hope, dangling ropes of tenuous connection emphasizing a man struggling to mend the fractures of his soul, Against Wind and Tide 1999. Slowly the works evolved into more peaceful ruminations of his past and the life surrounding him, a reconciliation with memory. More joyous works appeared, Memory of Spring 1999 depicting rays of light and hope, a flow of energy renewed and a feeling of calm and peace began to prevail, Music of Infinity 2004. A sense of the wonder of the world, our small place in it and the transient nature of life sprung forth onto the canvases as the artist eased into the autumn years of his life, The Milky Way 2004.

For the last 20 years Cam has been coming to Vietnam to paint, exhibit and to visit with friends and family, restoring ties to his homeland and memory. His current works show a man at peace in the world with a renewed energy to express the majesty of life with all its joys and sorrows.

His recent paintings, Beginning of Winter 2012, Ginkgo Sun 2012, Imprints 5 2011, Summer Sun 2012 are all joyous works full of wonder and life, a life reconciled. The artist and man has returned to himself and is at one with the world.

The 20 Year Anniversary of Suzanne Lecht in Vietnam, her journey discovering the heart of the hidden world of contemporary art in Vietnam

Suzanne Lecht, an American, widowed at the age of 44, left her past and sorrow tying her to Tokyo and in 1994 was compelled to move to Vietnam, a mysterious land with a tragic past entwined with her own. A Cathay Pacific in flight magazine with its images of the works of the pioneering group of artists, the “Gang of Five”, captured her heart and a decision was made. She would create her new life in this enigmatic, mysterious country with the hopes of becoming a small bridge of reconciliation between the two countries bound by the beauty of the spirit, not by the devastation of war.

A chance encounter on her very first day in Hanoi led her to the studio of Pham Quang Vinh, one of the Gang of Five. A deep friendship ensued as Suzanne began immersing herself in the arts and culture of Vietnam. In 1997 Suzanne met Nguyen Cam at the Nam Son Gallery where she purchased one of the first major works of her collection, Roots, Traces of the Past 1997. Cam and Suzanne’s friendship flourished as they both were immersing themselves in a land at once familiar and at the same time alien, each healing the wounds of the past.

In 1998 Suzanne exhibited Cam in a solo exhibition at the Arts of Pacific Asia in New York City and many years of presenting his work internationally followed in Paris, San Francisco, Sante Fe, Art Asia New York, Art Asia Miami, and a special solo exhibition in 2003 at the Robert Mondavi Winery in celebration of Robert Mondavi’s 90th birthday.

In 2005 Suzanne opened the Fielding Lecht Gallery in Austin, Texas with the solo exhibition of Nguyen Cam. A deep friendship has been forged over the years bound by the appreciation of the beauty and the power of art to transform and to reconcile with history.

2014 marks Suzanne Lecht’s 20th year of living and working in Vietnam, a journey of self discovery, of deep appreciation of a culture not her own, but one adopted by her heart.

Please come to celebrate this wonderful occasion honoring life, beauty, art and lives well lived.

Narratives of Exposure – 16th Anniversary of Nhà Sàn

Opening: Tue 30 Dec 2014, 6 pm

Exhibition: 30 Dec 2014 – 05 Jan 2015

Nha San COLLECTIVE

2nd floor, 24 Ly Quoc Su, Hanoi

Nha San Collective would like to invite you to “Narratives of Exposure” – our special event celebrating the 16th anniversary of Nha San.

Looking back at the history of Nha San, from the early days as a small experimental platform, to the later mobile project in public spaces and large projects in collaboration with various international cultural centres… Nha San embraces openness and flexibility and continues to develop towards a more sustainable model.

2014 celebrates 16 years of operation – the year marked a turning point for Nha San Collective after moving to a new space at 24 Ly Quoc Su. Besides organising exhibitions, film screenings, performances and open studios, we also host talks, discussions with artists, professionals. Moreover, educational workshops and art tours are organised on a regular basis. These activities have been successful in attracting a larger audience, especially young audiences.

Within the context of the anniversary, we are also pleased to introduce some photography works, video and installation of two artists who remain close to the operation of Nha San, Jamie Maxtone-Graham and Nguyen Thuy Tien. Each work consists of a separate story but they share a commonality, that is using the language of photography and interactive contact between the camera and object composition to create a conversation full of improvisation between the subjectivity and objectivity.

“Narratives of Exposure” will take place at 18:00 on December 30, 2014 at Nha San Collective Exhibition space and LaCa cafe, 24 Ly Quoc Su.

Hanoigrapevines/VNN